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A warning for those who try to play the game before knowing the name of the game's creator (and checking the rules for themselves). The setter has not fully explained the rules. The deaths and re-births should occur simultaneously. If not, depending upon where you start the process, the results are likely to be different. Eg, starting from the top, cell (5,11) would stay alive because you've already killed cell (4,12); when in fact cell (5,11) should also die.

Since the setter doesn't indicate how the live and dead cells should finally be represented, it's probably not necessary to play the game at all.

I've corrected a letter dropped from 7, revealing that highlighting of the end result is after all required...

Help with wordplay for 5a, please? Thanks.

First half of the word should be straightforward. Second half is 7-letter word for 'attempted', minus its first letter (the extra one as per preamble) and the 'centre' of 'shopping'.

Thanks, heisenberg. I was on the right track but had/have reservations. One, the abbreviation of the first letter of the answer is supported by Bradford's, but I'm having trouble finding support in Chambers. Second, if I've got the correct missing letter, it seems like the second half of the answer is pretty loosely clued by "attempted". Maybe I've just got the wrong answer. Thanks again.

I thought along the lines Heisenberg suggests but it seems to result in a word which basically means "stumbled", so I'm puzzled

I think I've got the same word as you Barretter, the odd thing is if you ignore the pp part of the clue, the word would be an exact synonym of 'attempted'.

Have you parsed 12d. yet? I've got a word meaning 'Muslim courts of justice', but can't work out the wordplay.

Cancel query regarding 12d., I'd spelt the word a W instead of a V.

5a: it didn't occur to me to check the first letter as it's a common abbreviation but you're right, it's not explicit in Chambers. I agree the rest is loose; I might be wrong but I'd seen the end of the grid at that stage so didn't look too hard to justify!

Re 5A - Removal of pp incorrect. The first letter is not an abbreviation but the whole word with synonym for shopping centre removed.